Quote of the Day

Finding yourself is not really how it works.  You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket.  You are also not lost.  Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are.  "Finding yourself" is actually returning to yourself, an unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.

-- Emily McDowell

Bookin' It in 2017

I read the following 15 books in 2017. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or intriguing.

1. Joan Jett by Todd Oldham
2. The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family by Eleanor D. Payson 
3. Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena 
4. I Am Not Your Negro: A Companion Edition to the Documentary Film Directed by Raoul Peck by James Baldwin 
5. Felicity by Mary Oliver 
6. One Today by Richard Blanco 
7. The Amazing Adventures of the Afterbirth of Jesus by Peterson Toscano 
8. There Is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love by Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell 
9. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson 
10. Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws by Kate Bornstein 
11. Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon 
12. She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton 
13. This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe 
14. Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth
15. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast